Many brands are now heavily using this mobile app to boost their marketing strategy. Instagram can be used to gain the necessary momentum needed to capture the attention of the market segment that has an interest in the product offering or services.[61] As Instagram is supported by Apple and android system, it can be easily accessed by smartphone users. Moreover, it can be accessed by the Internet as well. Thus, the marketers see it as a potential platform to expand their brands exposure to the public, especially the younger target group. On top of this, marketers do not only use social media for traditional Internet advertising, but they also encourage users to create attention for a certain brand. This generally creates an opportunity for greater brand exposure.[62] Furthermore, marketers are also using the platform to drive social shopping and inspire people to collect and share pictures of their favorite products. Many big names have already jumped on board: Starbucks, MTV, Nike, Marc Jacobs, and Red Bull are a few examples of multinationals that adopted the mobile photo app early. Fashion blogger Danielle Bernstein, who goes by @weworewhat on Instagram, collaborated with Harper's Bazaar to do a piece on how brands are using Instagram to market their products, and how bloggers make money from it. Bernstein, who currently has one and a half million followers on Instagram, and whose "outfit of the day" photos on Snapchat get tens of thousands of screenshots, explained that for a lot of her sponsored posts, she must feature the brand in a certain number of posts, and often cannot wear a competitor's product in the same picture. According to Harper's Bazaar, industry estimates say that brands are spending more than $1 billion per year on consumer-generated advertising. Founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom even went to Paris Fashion week, going to couture shows and meeting with designers to learn more about how style bloggers, editors, and designers are currently dominating much of the content on his application.[63]

In the context of the social web, engagement means that customers and stakeholders, such as consumer advocacy groups and groups that criticize companies (e.g., lobby groups or advocacy organizations) are active participants rather than passive viewers. Social media use in a business or political context allows all consumers/citizens to express and share an opinion about a company's products, services or business practices, or a government's actions. Each participating customer or non-customer (or citizen) who is participating online via social media becomes part of the marketing department (or a challenge to the marketing effort), as other customers read their positive or negative comments or reviews. Getting consumers and potential consumers (or citizens) to be engaged online is fundamental to successful social media marketing.[20] With the advent of social media marketing, it has become increasingly important to gain customer interest in products and services, which can eventually be translated into buying behavior (or voting or donating behavior in a political context). New online marketing concepts of engagement and loyalty have emerged which aim to build customer participation and brand reputation.[21]

Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. Consistency is key to helping your followers understand what to expect from your brand, so they know why they should continue to follow you and what value they can get from your social accounts. It also helps keep your branding consistent even when you have multiple people working on your social team.
Likealyzer takes the guess work out of your Facebook strategy. The recommendations point you in the right direction. Compare your Facebook page to competitors, partners, or brands you admire. Likealyzer will recommend similar pages to watch. Likealyzer converts raw Facebook analytics into a simple yet sophisticated report. Recommendations, not just metrics. Likealyzer is a Facebook tool designed for social media managers, agencies, and entrepreneurs.
If Facebook is your game, then try out Social Insider: www.socialinsider.io. Social Insider allows digital marketers to compare their Facebook page with an unlimited number of competitors they want. They get all the history data, insights about paid growth vs. organic growth, active fans, posts and engagement insights. Hope it’s useful for you guys 🙂
Schedugram lets you plan, schedule and upload your Instagram content – and collaborate within your team to product the best 'grams possible. We have led the Instagram business scheduling market for 5 years now and we're not stopping: with Schedugram you can schedule and publish carousel posts, videos, Instagram stories and more. With unlimited user accounts included at no extra costs, you are not forced to share logins to save money on your subscription: if someone needs a login, you can collaborate instantly. Join us for a 7 day free trial, and discover why over 10,000 businesses trust Schedugram every day.
As individuals, we have a higher tendency to follow accounts of “real people” vs. businesses even if we don’t personally know the person. I have tried my hardest to show on social media that WordStream is a real place with a real person with a real personality behind it! To get some ideas, Gizmodo and Contently have companies that manage their social accounts with flair and sass and everything people love…about real people. My personal favorites are Chipotle, Seamless, and Nutella. This says nothing about my real-life favorite things, I swear.
Getting traction on Pinterest doesn’t require any “secret sauce” or deep knowledge of algorithms and other tactics. Pinterest’s Guided Search is as easy as it gets. Be clear about the theme(s) of your pinboard(s) and stick closely to them. You can create as many pinboards as you want. Then, simply optimize your image file names and descriptions, as well as their titles and you’ll be ready to enjoy a pinstravaganza.

If you’re looking for a platform to create your social media content calendar, there are a plethora of great options available. Both Buffer and Hootsuite are free to sign up, and allow you to schedule social media posts in advance, based on the platform of your choice. This means that you won’t have to worry about posting anything manually at a specific time.

SocialFlow's algorithms analyze user behavior and then optimize each post based on real-time data, in order to predict the best times for publishing content to capture peak attention from target audiences. They release posts when timing, relevance and audience are optimized, and also offer a full suite of services that aim to expand audience engagement and increase revenue per customer. - Ryan Pezzotti, Knowzo.com
Socialinsider. A social media analytics tool that analyzes the social media strategies of your competitors, Socialinsider enables you to better understand your rival’s operations so you can beat them at their own game, from content published to which ones are boosted the most. It covers popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. With its advanced machine learning algorithms, this solution competently handles all the grunt work in data collection, automatically delivering insights on a silver platter.
IFTTT stands for If This Then That. It's a tool that actually lets you build your very own automated actions, called "recipes," so that you don't have to do them yourself. For example, if you want all of your Instagram photos automatically saved to a public folder of your Dropbox account, you can do that by building a recipe with IFTTT so you never have do it manually.
It is imperative to monitor all comments and respond in a timely manner. Good or bad, all feedback needs to be addressed. If someone praises your product and/or service, thank them. If they have a complaint or concern, reach out to them. It is important to investigate the validity of the negative comment and address it immediately. Customer feedback can help you better understand reaction to your products and/or services (we will discuss further in next section).
If your business naturally focuses on a specific niche (like cat owners, for example), your job will be easier than if you’re trying to appeal to a more general audience (like a telecommunications or airline brands). I recommend lurking in the places your intended customers often hang out, in subreddits or blog comments for example, to see what they’re interested in.
Those who rely on Twitter to get their message across will find much to like about Followerwonk. This tool comes with a variety on analytics tool which will help you determine everything there is to know about your audience, including their location and the hours during which they are at their most active. This will enable you to target your posts and increase their impact, because they will be read by more people. You can also do the clever thing and integrate it with Buffer, and set it to post schedule posts automatically at the time your readers are on Twitter.
Sociota is a powerful platform for monitoring of social media, management of social media, analysis of social media and engagement of social media platform. Sociota is simply a toolkit designed for providing highly optimized and successful social media campaigns. The social media monitoring feature enables users know what their audience are saying about them on social media sites. The social media monitoring feature also works by monitoring consumer opinions on user’s products. With social media monitoring, users are provided with an excellent platform for proactively responding to their consumers, therefore avoiding crisis. The social media analysis feature enables users know…
In May 2014, Instagram had over 200 million users. The user engagement rate of Instagram was 15 times higher than of Facebook and 25 times higher than that of Twitter.[57] According to Scott Galloway, the founder of L2 and a professor of marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business, latest studies estimate that 93% of prestige brands have an active presence on Instagram and include it in their marketing mix.[58] When it comes to brands and businesses, Instagram's goal is to help companies to reach their respective audiences through captivating imagery in a rich, visual environment.[59] Moreover, Instagram provides a platform where user and company can communicate publicly and directly, making itself an ideal platform for companies to connect with their current and potential customers.[60]
Hootsuite is one of the most established and popular apps when it comes to social media scheduling and marketing. You can use it schedule post, receive in-depth reports, and collaborate with your team members, thanks to built-in team work features. You may notice than it sounds quite similar to what Sprout Social does, but there is one key difference between the two: whereas Sprout Social will display all the data inside a single stream, Hootsuite uses multiple ones. It is simply a matter of finding the former or the latter approach more preferable.
TweetDeck is totally free and perfect for those who need to manage multiple accounts, follow specific hashtags, reply to lots of other users and see exactly what's being tweeted in real time. You can organize everything you need in separate columns so you can see all of it on one screen. Keep in mind that TweetDeck is meant for the desktop web only.

It is important for any organization to have social media representation. Using social media management software, they are able to get an idea how consumers view them and know about competitors and industry trends. Social media also allows for the positive representation of a company, product or service, which is always a good thing. Building a good name and public image is most likely to improve connections with customers more quickly.

James is an Ecommerce consultant and owner of Digital Juggler, an E-commerce and Digital Marketing consultancy helping retailers develop, execute and evolve E-commerce strategies and optimise their digital channel. With a background as a Head of E-commerce and also agency side as Head of Client Development, he has experienced life on both sides of the fence. He has helped companies like A&N Media, Sweaty Betty and Smythson to manage RFP/ITT proposals. and been lead consultant on high profile projects for Econsultancy, Salmon and Greenwich Consulting. He is a guest blogger for Econsultancy, for whom he also writes best practice guides, regularly contributes to industry events and co-hosts #ecomchat, a weekly Twitter chat for e-commerce knowledge sharing. For e-commerce advice and support, connect with James on LinkedIn and Twitter.
An overall good mix of gender, location, income, race and education. So what kinds of visuals attract the most Facebook likes, shares and comments? First, it’s important to lay the groundwork so that the exposure your images get will draw more people in, and make it immediately clear what you offer and its benefit to them. You can do this through:
The best social media apps offer a range of solutions that can help you easily organize multiple accounts and share information across several social networks without ever needing to post anything separately to your accounts directly from the web. Although many of the features, layouts, and intuitiveness differ across each app, they all get the job done when you choose the right one that matches your current social presence and marketing strategy.
Monitor multiple social media platforms: Publishing on a variety of social media platforms is also possible with SMMS, enabling users to garner more audiences, while being able to compare metrics across social media solutions. Posting across social media platforms is also achievable with a single update, saving managers time and allowing them to focus on other matters. Content success on different platforms can likewise be compared, which can be used to boost social media strategy.

If you want to know what’s happening with your brand’s social networking sites you need social media monitoring tools. Before you reach for your wallet and start to spend money try out some of the free social media monitoring services. This way you will get an understanding of what is available and if you need any paid services to monitor social media.

It’s well known that social media is a marketing channel which many ecommerce brands have already utilized effectively to skyrocket their stores growth, so we’ve created this article to provide you with some tips & tricks to help you find that same level of success. Whether you plan to use Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat to grow your business, we’ve got you covered. Let’s go!

It's worth noting here that even armed with all the sophisticated technology offered in this roundup, there is no substitute for organic and genuinely interesting content on your company's social media channels. You can have the most technically sound social media strategy, but it's still up to you to create something your audience will want to follow and engage with. The best of these tools automate a lot of the hard work that your customers will never see (after all, the best social media appears effortless). It's just important to temper your expectations on what these platforms actually do before investing in any of them. Ultimately, you'll have to consider your brand's personality and tone for yourself.

What do you want to get out of your social Web participation? Why are you doing it? Are you trying to generate direct sales? Are you trying to offer a form of customer service? Do you want to build relationships with customers and boost loyalty? Your answers to these questions greatly affect the type of content you publish and the activities you participate in on the social Web.

Too often, businesses fail to secure all of the relevant social media profiles prior to kicking off a formal social media strategy. That's why I highly recommend KnowEm. KnowEm allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 500 popular and emerging social media websites. By securing your social media identities you will maximize brand equity. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com

Aim to produce and share content that educates, informs, entertains, or inspires. Try to mix things up a little with a balance of the four types of content and keep overtly promotional posts to a minimum. Outdoor outfitter REI has a Force of Nature campaign that highlights women in the outdoors. The content relates to REI’s mission and aims to inspire, not directly sell.
Facebook Pages Manager: One of the most popular SMMS currently in the market, Facebook Pages Manager is a mobile application designed to aid in managing businesses’ social media pages. Using the solution, users can update social media pages, create posts and share media, among others. Notifications regarding social media activities and reminders are also automatically sent by the app. Page insights are likewise provided, enabling users to capture information regarding customer wants and needs. Facebook Pages Manager also offers both business and personal social media tools.